British readers are fixated with the Third Reich. Photograph: Heinrich Hoffmann/Timepix/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Nazi Gold: Publishing the Third Reich (Radio 4) was an uncomfortable hoot. It was hard not to laugh, what with Clive Anderson's neat, funny delivery of his lines as presenter, the extraordinary book titles among the 350 Nazi-themed books published in the UK last year – How Green Were the Nazis?; The Collectable Spoons of the Third Reich – and the frankness with which authors in this sector of the market spoke about their lucrative endeavours. "If you put a nice embossed gold swastika on the front, you're off," said one.

Even a discussion about Mein Kampf brought one of the programme's funniest lines. Anderson was reading online reviews of Hitler's notorious book to David Mitchell. One railed against the "bias" in negative responses; another described it as "incomparably atrocious". Mitchell quipped: "That sounds like a bit of a Mary Poppins song."

More disturbing than the chuckles was evidence of a British fixation with books about the Third Reich. In its few serious moments, the programme explored the reasons for this. It's about an untarnished moment of glory, various experts agreed ("We were unequivocally good. We can all feel pretty smug"). Still, it's odd, and not a little depressing, to hear a chap from the Bookseller describing the big book trends in Britain as "celebrity memoirs, celebrity cookbooks and Nazis".